What is the “Context Gap”? Brandon D’Agostino of Cloudficient discusses it and why traditional eDiscovery can’t explain what really happened.

As discussed in his post titled (wait for it!) The Context Gap: Why Traditional eDiscovery Can’t Explain What Really Happened (available here), Brandon follows up on his previous post on context-aware eDiscovery by going deeper into the core problem that makes the misalignment of modern eDiscovery tools and how work happens today so dangerous: the context gap.

The hardest questions legal teams are asked to answer today are no longer about what files exist. They’re about what actually happened.

When lawyers, regulators, or investigators ask questions, they’re rarely asking about files in isolation. They’re asking things like:

• Who had access to this information at the time?
• What did this person rely on to make a decision?
• When did a document change, and who changed it?
• What did the organization know, and when did it know it?

Traditional eDiscovery workflows are poorly equipped to answer those questions because they treat evidence as static artifacts. Detached from the environment in which they were created, shared, and used. That gap between the artifact and the reality around it is what Brandon calls the context gap.

So, why can’t much of the data we have today support legal reasoning? Where does the context gap first show up? And why can’t legal questions be answered with files alone? Find out here, it’s only one click! How else are you going to bridge the gap? 😉

For more information on this topic, please join Adam Rouse, Director & Sr. Counsel, eDiscovery Operations at Walgreens, Co., Brandon D’Agostino, Vice President of Product at Cloudficient and Eric Robinson, JD/PMP, Vice President, Global Advisory Services & Strategic Solutions at KLDiscovery and me for the ACEDS webinar titled Context-Aware eDiscovery: A Modern Approach for Modern Data on Wednesday, February 18th at 1pm ET (noon CT, 10am PT). Register here!

So, what do you think? Is your organization struggling with modern data challenges? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using Microsoft Designer, using the term “robot lawyer wearing a suit looking to jump across a canyon”.

Disclosure: Cloudficient is an Educational Partner and sponsor of eDiscovery Today

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.